I did not ride last night. I had a super stressful afternoon at work, got my errands done, and proceeded to stress over the election. Instead of feeding that stress straight into the ponies, the two mares got to hang out in the arena for a couple hours. Polly got annoying, Fetti was proper Alpha Mare and put her in her place, no blood was shed.

Polly continues to be snarky alpha mare and has nailed the others in turnout more than once. I don’t stress leaving her and Fetti relatively unsupervised. Fetti raised two foals, has lived with other horses, and has excellent social skills and ability to reprimand exactly as strongly as needed. I do worry about leaving her out with our other usual “herdmate.” She’s not as convincing or adept at herd dynamics and ends up getting hurt when she doesn’t stand up for herself. Polly’s a bit of a bully, I don’t love it, and I don’t have a good solution to fix it.

I’m learning that I don’t have to ride one or both horses. It’s not fair to them to get on full of tension. It’s OK to just turn out or round pen or walk around. Fitness can be fixed later, build out the relationships now, take a deep breath and find center.

It’s a strange year. One step at a time. Fingers aggressively crossed for positive election outcomes.